The semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) industry has experienced rapid growth. Technological advances in IC materials and design have produced generations of ICs where each generation has smaller and more complex circuits than the previous generation. However, these advances have increased the complexity of processing and manufacturing ICs and, for these advances to be realized, similar developments in IC processing and manufacturing are needed. In the course of integrated circuit evolution, functional density (i.e., the number of interconnected devices per chip area) has generally increased while geometry size (i.e., the smallest component (or line) that can be created using a fabrication process) has decreased. This scaling down process generally provides benefits by increasing production efficiency and lowering associated costs. Such scaling-down also produces a relatively high power dissipation value.
For example, light-emitting diode (LED) circuit devices generally produce a relatively low amount of heat when compared to their counterpart incandescent and/or halogen lights. However, high-output capacity LEDs (e.g., up to 100 watts) generate a enough heat that the heat must be managed to prevent burning-up the LED device with the generated heat. Traditional solutions assume a uniform heat distribution throughout the device and thus provide a traditional thermal interface material (TIM) and a large copper block heat spreader attached between an LED and the surface of a large heat sink device. Other traditional solutions couple an LED device to a vapor chamber. However, this solution again assumes a uniform heat distribution throughout the device and has a large vapor chamber for the entire LED device such that non-heat producing portions of the LED device are also coupled the vapor chamber which is attached to a surface of a heat sink and serve little purpose in removing heat.
Thus, it is desirable to have a thermal management system for multiple heat source devices, such as LEDs, addressing one or more of the issues discussed above, such as a thermal management system that provides thermal management for device hot spots and multiple heat producing components.